Baseball's ‘God’ chooses video for Hall of Fame speech

Former umpire Doug Harvey talks about becoming a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame during an introduction in Indianapolis, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009. Harvey, 79, and former St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog, 78, earned election to the Hall of Fame on Monday, joining as selections on the Veterans Committee ballot. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
— AP

Former umpire Doug Harvey talks about becoming a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame during an introduction in Indianapolis, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009. Harvey, 79, and former St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog, 78, earned election to the Hall of Fame on Monday, joining as selections on the Veterans Committee ballot. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
/ AP

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Doug Harvey will be taking his bows in person. His Hall of Fame induction speech, however, has been prerecorded.

The umpire whose authoritative accuracy prompted comparisons to the Deity has lately made some concessions to his own mortality. Because his voice has been impaired by illness and chemotherapy, baseball’s “God” will be addressing the crowd Sunday in Cooperstown through a video filmed this spring.

“He had a stroke a year ago and two seizures since, and he’s had pneumonia three times,” Joy Harvey, the umpire’s wife, said Friday. “The timbre of his voice changes depending on how much he uses his voice and atmospheric conditions. Because of this, he decided to do the tape.”

At the suggestion of former Padres promotions Director Andy Strasberg, Harvey had been contemplating a just-in-case video long before the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee authorized his induction last December.

The idea was to preserve some appropriate remarks in the event Harvey was enshrined posthumously.

The man is 80 years old, after all. Maybe he will live forever, but that’s probably not the percentage play.

“Actually, this came up years ago as a result of the frustration that Doug was not getting the (Hall of Fame) acknowledgment,” Strasberg said. “I guaranteed that he would get in the Hall of Fame. I just didn’t know if it would be in our lifetime.

“He kept putting me off. I think he was a little uncomfortable. But as I told him, if it’s 50 years from now, and we’re dead and gone, is there anyone anymore more appropriate (to speak from beyond the grave) than the umpire known as ‘God?’ ”

It would be just like an umpire, too, to insist on the last word, and perhaps this umpire in particular. Doug Harvey once played baseball and football at San Diego State, but his carriage and his confidence bespoke a more commanding role. Reflecting on his career and his place in Cooperstown during a March interview in San Diego, Harvey referred to himself in the third person twice in the space of two sentences.

Yet if Harvey walks on water — Terry Kennedy’s 1984 allegation that caused him to be called “God,” — he remains leery of tempting fate. The old umpire kept spoiling Strasberg’s pitch, Joy Harvey said, because “it just seemed kind of presumptuous. He hadn’t been elected.”

Full disclosure: Strasberg sought me out last year for input on Harvey’s candidacy for Cooperstown. Concerned with the umpire’s health and determined that his message not be missed, Strasberg broached the idea of a pre-acceptance acceptance speech over lunch in Mission Valley.

Having endured a lot of excessive oratory in upstate New York — Carlton Fisk’s being the most excessive — the idea of a carefully scripted video presentation had obvious appeal, but it also entailed some risk. Had word leaked of Harvey preparing a speech on a contingency basis, it might have created a negative backlash ahead of the Veterans Committee vote.

Besides, having narrowly missed in previous elections, Harvey didn’t need a huge surge of sympathy based on his declining health so much as the patience to let events play out. Though there’s a perception that umpire candidates start out with two strikes in Cooperstown, Harvey is the ninth arbiter to achieve Hall of Fame status.

“I wish my folks could be here,” Harvey said during a telephone news conference last week. “Because my mom was the first one, when I was still umpiring back about 1985, she said, ‘Well, Doug, you’re going to the Hall of Fame.’ And I couldn’t believe that my mother could come up with this. And I said, ‘Mom, you know, that’s crazy.’

“And she said, ‘You mark my word, you’re going to the Hall of Fame.’ So I wish she could have been here for that. … It’s beyond imagination. You just cannot believe what it entails.”

For Strasberg, who also served as Rollie Fingers’ Cooperstown ghostwriter, it has entailed writing several drafts of Harvey’s speech over a span of two months.

“It was relatively easy,” Strasberg said. “What it comes down to is listening. You ask the obvious questions: What’s the message you want to send? What’s important to you? And who do you want to thank?

“He does want to acknowledge his pride in umpires and that it’s not his day, it’s their day. … Umpires don’t have fans. This is an opportunity for people to understand what umpires are all about, the pride that they have, their love of the game.”

Harvey recorded the speech at Cooperstown’s Otesaga Hotel during his Hall of Fame orientation tour this spring. With pauses for applause, Joy Harvey said, it runs roughly 15 minutes.

“I hope that it is well-received,” she said. “We think it’s a strong speech and it has a strong message. It’s not an ‘I-I-I-I’ message. And I think it will be meaningful to anyone who loves baseball and listens to the speech.”